Most aspiring management consultants will spend about 95% of their time focusing on the technical issues to fix their case performance. That is, they focus on hypotheses, frameworks, decision trees, structures and calculations. However, what if that is not the areas which will yield the greatest gains?

What if the main obstacles to your performance do not lie in the tangible areas of cases?

What if doing more cases and becoming better at them does not lead to an offer?

It is clear from sessions 5 to 6 that Rafik could achieve at least a 50% increase in case performance by focusing on non-case issues. Which he did in sessions 7, 8 and 9. You can watch them all on the site. In fact, he just needed to do 4 things consistently across all his sessions:

• Not show any emotion such heavily sighing, putting his face in his hands, raising his eyebrows or darting his eyes around during the case – all show fatigue or desperation in the case. Interviewers do not like this. In fact, this sabotages the case even before it begins.

• Not make excuses of any kind before presenting a solution or explanation – excuses are inefficient since they do contribute to solving the case, show a lack of confidence and each minute spent making an excuse is a minute not spent trying to solve the case. Moreover, you do not get any credit/benefit for apologizing in this manner

• Ensure he asked specific questions – when a candidate quits in a case or simply blurts out they do not understand, it is enormously frustrating and inefficient for the coach. The coach needs to thereafter work through the entire case, since the candidate did not specify his problem areas, by providing detailed explanations of everything. If the candidate was more specific, the coach could focus their explanations on just a few important areas. This saves time and speeds up the training.

• Being on time, completing the prescribe material in advance and setting up the technical requirements, like using a cable versus Wi-Fi, in advance – When a candidate is late for a call they tend to be fatigued, disoriented and tired. Moreover, it raises concerns about their level of commitment. When candidates have not done the required homework, the entire session can be jeopardized. It takes a skilled coach to keep a coaching session on track when the required work is not done. The coach has to, in a manner of speaking, step in to fill the gaps. Finally, simple things like not checking the internet feed, setting up their laptop webcam etc., can end up wasting up to 25% of a coaching call unless it is done in advance.

In this podcast we encourage you to watch Rafik’s sessions 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 to see how non-case areas can cripple performance – sessions 7, 8, 9 lead a sharp performance spike while session 10 leads to a performance drop. In the special session 6 we provide the 4-point plan to improve performance. In fact, most readers should think about how the four areas listed above, and discussed in detail in the podcast, can impact their performance.

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